


Kikayon

by CaptainLordAuditor



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Gen, fantasy judaism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-16
Updated: 2018-03-16
Packaged: 2019-04-01 00:30:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13986576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainLordAuditor/pseuds/CaptainLordAuditor
Summary: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I?”-Hillel The Elder





	Kikayon

**Author's Note:**

> For various reasons, one of the campaigns I was playing in stopped, but I was Attached and had to give my cleric _some_ kind of ending.

In the beginning of Time, the Old King ruled over all the worlds.

A little after that, the Old King grew tired of doing all work himself. He was hardly a king, at this time, for all that everything was under his reign, there was not a lot to everything. Everything, in this shortly-after-the-beginning-of-Time, mostly consisted of a tiny village where his people planted wheat and watched it grow. But they had wheat, and they had skills; not long later they had enough wheat that they could afford for some of them to never grow wheat, and seek other professions.

The Old King called to his Smith, and told Him he wanted servants. They could afford it.

The Smith looked at the Old King with a smile, and slyly said He would try.

The Smith tried many times, but every time the servants He created left the Old King’s service. For this the Old King declared that they should be banished from the village forever should they leave; and they did; and because the village was all there was, when they left they died.

At last the Old King sighed in the cold. Every time the Smith had created more servants He had created another village for them to live in, and taken some aspect of the first village to give to theirs. Now there was sun only enough for half the year, and winter grew heavy. “Make me warmth,” said the Old King.

The Smith smiled again, and in two days gave to the Old King a staff of fire.

The Old King took it, and when the fire burned down the staff to his hand, he dropped it in pain, and cried out. The fire spread, crackling in laughter, throughout all the village, and as it spread it leapt higher, and figures danced in it, with eyes like flame and hair like smoke. The First Village burned, and the children of the flame fled in their laughter, to the sea, where they took the ships fashioned by the children of ice and with their grandfather the Smith, teased the Old King.

The First Village burned, and for a time it was still. But nothing ever finishes, it only stops, and the First Village was rebuilt, and became the First City, and Old King reigned there, and sought ways to expand his kingdom. He cast chains over all the Smith’s children, yet the Smith’s hammer always came to break them. And in time, it was forgotten that He had been a smith once, for His anvil was abandoned and His hammer given to those with chains to break and homes to build.

The river of time flowed on, and the Old King’s domain rose and fell.

* * *

 

A very great many years after the beginning of Time, a child of flame is born. Flame is not made to serve easily, god or man, and shall always leave behind its hearth or die, and its children are the same. When she is born, she has no name, only that of the house her fire serves, and the given name of Zorisa. Soon she leaves, a child-of-silver, of the ones who call themselves the drow, breaks the chains of Dimakos, and for this she binds herself to the KingSlayer and ChainBreaker and takes the name of Decision.

In another world, the Old King rises.

It is not in the nature of Fire to serve easily, the Old King or the ChainBreaker, and Decision struggles with the burden she has taken. The ChainBreaker, she finds, has laid out a voyage that is fraught with storms. She did not agree to this; she wishes for a quiet life of breaking the smallest chains. It is her decision, for which she named herself; the ChainBreaker delights in His children fighting those above them, even Himself.

She has a choice; she can fight against the Old King, and serve the ChainBreaker, or she can turn away and live for herself, as she planned. But if she turns away, who shall stand against the Old King?

In the daylight, she makes her first choice, and binds herself with word to the One Who Does Not Bind.

And in the night, she knows that if another is worth binding herself to, then they shall understand if she does not. The contract that might have bound them to each other is set aflame; her shackle is broken, her chains are smashed. She runs in her laughter to the sea, to the ship fashioned by a child of ice on the sea, where she belongs.

There is, far away, a child-of-silver who freed himself, and bound himself to another in love, and rebuilt his life, and knows that he can do more.

There is no end; nothing ever finishes. Some day, the Old King will rise again, and the ChainBreaker’s hammer will swing. But for now, Radorel of the TyrantTaker Temple is known as GodWrestler, and Decision lives for the sea.

They are content; Decision because she is for herself, and Radorel because he is not.


End file.
